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Motorola launches a triple SIM dumbphone in Brazil for reasons we don’t understand

Categories: Motorola
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, June 4th, 2012 at 5:16 AM
Christ-the-Redeemer-Rio-de-Janeiro-Brazil

Motorola, who is now a part of Google, just launched the “Motokey 3-Chip” in Brazil. It’s a feature phone with what looks to be some basic Facebook integration, but that’s not what makes this thing special. Peel the battery cover off and you’ll see slots for three SIM cards. Not one, not two, but three freaking SIM cards. How many girlfriends can a guy have before his wallet starts to complain? Anyway, back to the device at hand, it’s set to cost around $175, which is an obscene price for a dumbphone. At that point you’re better off buying a low end smartphone and a few decade old Nokia feature phones that you have to charge once or twice a month.

The bigger question is why does the 3-Chip even exist? Forget about the Google acquisition for a second, didn’t Motorola Mobility’s old CEO, Sanjay Jha, swear off dumbphones and made a promise to everyone that his company would bet the farm on Android? How well is the 3-Chip going to be supported now that Google’s in charge? Is Motorola Mobility going to make, dare we say it, a Google+ centric phone for emerging markets? Knowing how these things work, it’s likely that this device was at least a year or two in the making, and that it just didn’t make sense to kill it in the end because several hundred thousand have already been manufactured.

Another important question, this time about the emergine markets, every release of Android has demand faster and more expensive hardware. Just look at the evolution of the Nexus One, to the Nexus S, to the Galaxy Nexus to get an idea of what we’re talking about. When will Google release a version of Android that’s specifically tailored for cheap devices?

Isn’t “the next billion” where the market is heading?

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1306458659 Calvin Rj

    The reason is because in Brazil 70-80% of the cell phone base is pre-paid and a lot of those phones are dumb. Different from US where you need to insert credits every month even in  a prepaid plan, in Brazil in order to keep your service active all you need to do is “recharge” your phone with calling credits every  5, 6 months depending the carrier. Prepaid SIM cards are very cheap. On the top of that all incoming calls are FREE no matter the network you have service and all in-network call are also FREE in most cases, That’s the perfect mix to have one person (especially low income) to buy SIM cards from different carriers to make “free”or low cost calls just recharging their phones every 6 months. One phone with 3 SIM cards might be useful so they don’t need to carry 3 different phones from different carries. I hope my explanation helped.

    • http://twitter.com/adailtonba2 Ad@1LtoN

       Crazy, huh?

  • Andrewfroboy

    Yup, I live in Brasil, lots of people have phones with multiple SIMs to save money, calls are nearly free when its in network